Wireless communication systems commonly include information carrying modulated carrier signals that are wirelessly transmitted from a transmission source (for example, a base transceiver station) to one or more receivers (for example, subscriber units) within an area or region.
Spatial Multiplexing
Spatial multiplexing is a transmission technology that exploits multiple antennae at both the base transceiver station and at the subscriber units to increase the bit rate in a wireless radio link with no additional power or bandwidth consumption. Under certain conditions, spatial multiplexing offers a linear increase in spectrum efficiency with the number of antennae. For example, if three antennae are used at the transmitter (base transceiver station) and the receiver (subscriber unit), the stream of possibly coded information symbols is split into three independent substreams. These substreams occupy the same channel of a multiple access protocol, the same time slot in a time-division multiple access protocol, the same frequency slot in frequency-division multiple access protocol, the same code sequence in code-division multiple access protocol or the same spatial target location in space-division multiple access protocol. The substreams are applied separately to the transmit antennae and transmitted through a radio channel. Due to the presence of various scattering objects in the environment, each signal experiences multipath propagation.
The composite signals resulting from the transmission are finally captured by an array of receiving antennae with random phase and amplitudes. At the receiver array, a spatial signature of each of the received signals is estimated. Based on the spatial signatures, a signal processing technique is applied to separate the signals, recovering the original substreams.
FIG. 1 shows three transmitter antenna arrays 110, 120, 130 that transmit data symbols to a receiver antenna array 140. Each transmitter antenna array includes spatially separate antennae. A receiver connected to the receiver antenna array 140 separates the received signals.
A limiting factor in the performance of spatial multiplexing systems is the ability of the receiver to separate the multiple transmitted signals. That is, the receiver antennae receive composite signals that include at least some components from each of the multiple transmitted signals. The receiver must be able to separate the composite signal into the individual signal components.
FIG. 2 shows modulated carrier signals traveling from a transmitter 210 to a receiver 220 following many different (multiple) transmission paths.
Multipath can include a composition of a primary signal plus duplicate or echoed images caused by reflections of signals off objects between the transmitter and receiver. The receiver may receive the primary signal sent by the transmitter, but also receives secondary signals that are reflected off objects located in the signal path. The reflected signals arrive at the receiver later than the primary signal. Due to this misalignment, the multipath signals can cause intersymbol interference or distortion of the received signal.
The actual received signal can include a combination of a primary and several reflected signals. Because the distance traveled by the original signal is shorter than the reflected signals, the signals are received at different times. The time difference between the first received and the last received signal is called the delay spread and can be as great as several micro-seconds.
The multiple paths traveled by the modulated carrier signal typically results in fading of the modulated carrier signal. Fading causes the modulated carrier signal to attenuate in amplitude when multiple paths subtractively combine.
Communication Diversity
Antenna diversity is a technique used in multiple antenna-based communication system to reduce the effects of multi-path fading. Antenna diversity can be obtained by providing a transmitter and/or a receiver with two or more antennae. These multiple antennae imply multiple channels that suffer from fading in a statistically independent manner. Therefore, when one channel is fading due to the destructive effects of multi-path interference, another of the channels is unlikely to be suffering from fading simultaneously. By virtue of the redundancy provided by these independent channels, a receiver can often reduce the detrimental effects of fading.
A limiting factor to the performance of communication diversity systems is the amount of correlation of the received signals with each other. The receiver detects the received signals and estimates the transmitted signal. The less de-correlated the received signals, the less accurate the estimates of the transmitted signal at the receiver.
It is desirable to have an apparatus and method that includes a multiple antenna wireless communication system that provides better separation and de-correlation of received signals than presently achievable. It is additionally desirable that the communication system be easy to implement, and allow adaptive optimization of received signal separation and received signal de-correlation.